


Artificial Thunder

by Shadowmatic



Series: Like Blood on Snow [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: 3rd person pov, Afghanistan, Captain Gareth - Freeform, F/F, Famine (mentioned) - Freeform, Multi, Nina Osbeck - Freeform, Pestilence (mentioned) - Freeform, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - Freeform, War, War (mentioned) - Freeform, death (mentioned) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-11 22:31:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17455523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowmatic/pseuds/Shadowmatic
Summary: When Nina is first posted to the desert, sleep is a hard thing to come by.Rewritten in 3rd PersonInspired by the Waste Land by T. S. Elliot and my dad





	Artificial Thunder

Nina awoke to the sound of thunder. For a moment, she was disoriented, but then she remembered. Afghanistan. The thunder wasn't real. 

It was a real noise of course, but it wasn't the natural phenomenon caused by the occurrence of lightning, it was artillery fire. Artificial thunder they called it here, where the frontline was everywhere and nowhere all at once. 

She opened her eyes with a small sigh and rolled over, sitting up. With each echoing boom, there was a flash of light, which lit up the sleeping faces of her fellow soldiers. 

“Can't sleep?” The raspy voice of the captain broke through the relative quiet.

“Nah. I just woke up.” Nina said. They sat quietly for a moment. 

“Join me for a smoke?” The captain asked. 

“Sure.” Nina said. She’s never smoked. 

She followed the captain out of the tent and over to a small rock outcropping. They sat down a couple of feet from each other, and there was a flicker of light as the captain flicked his lighter and lit his cigarette. Even though she knew it was artillery, Nina kept waiting for the sky to open up.

“What are you doing here kid?” The captain asked, exhaling smoke. He was staring up at the stars.

“I. I want to do right by my folks.” Nina said. “My father fought in Vietnam, and my mother was a nurse. They met over there.” That was something that she was actually sort of comfortable talking about. 

“No ambitions of your own?” The captain asked, taking another drag. Nina was pretty sure his name was Gareth. She hadn't been there for very long, which might have been part of the reason that the captain was even talking to her. 

She didn’t want to talk about the failed way that her education had turned out, or that fact that she had nowhere else to go. Not after what had happened. And she knew that she couldn’t tell him about that. So she just shrugged. 

“Boy back home?” The captain asked. Nina stared at him for a second. “Or girl.” He added, when she didn’t respond quickly enough. “I'm not going to judge.”

“There might have been somebody. Once.” She said. It was almost like he may have been reading her mind, picking up on her thoughts about them. Nina honestly wouldn't have been surprised. “But, uh. They moved on, while I stayed stuck.” She looked up at the sky. There were more stars than she had ever seen in her life. 

“Sucks kid.” The captain said. Nina suddenly wished that she had her camera on her. With the desert lit only by the stars, and the distant flashes of the artificial thunder, the captain's cigarette the only other spot of light, it’s looked just as empty as it did during the day, but it didn't terrify her like it should. Not many things did. They hadn't. It looked almost beautiful.

She sat quietly with the captain for a little while longer before he stood and slapped Nina on the shoulder. 

“Try and get some more sleep kid.” He said, before heading back into the tent. 

Nina stood to follow him, before looking back out over the desert, the empty expanse so free of light. Lilah would have loved this, Nina thought, before pushing the thought out of her head.

She went back into the tent and laid down on her cot. 

Nina pushed all thoughts of them out of her head, instead concentrating on the sound of artillery fire. 

The artificial thunderstorm raged on, but Nina imagined rain to accompany it. She fell asleep quickly after that.

**Author's Note:**

> Decided to rewrite this in a POV I'm more comfortable with. It's pretty well the same thing.


End file.
